‘The Lion King,’ ‘Mamma Mia!’ — the ’90s are back onstage. Are we stuck in a nostalgia cycle?

Take me away
I don’t mind
You better promise me
I’ll be back in time
Gotta get back in time
So goes the Huey Lewis & the News earworm “Back in Time,” from the 1985 sci-fi flick “Back to the Future.” It could also serve as the slogan for Mirvish’s upcoming season.
Because those nostalgia-inducing lyrics reflect the broader theme of the theatre company’s new programming, a lineup that almost entirely draws upon some surefire blasts from the past: from “Beetlejuice,” based on the ’80s cult classic, and a stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” (2001) to a new production commemorating Live Aid (1985) along with a musical version of “Back to the Future” itself. 
Beginning in the fall, Mirvish’s marquees will look like a throwback from the ’90s. With a new sit-down production of “The Lion King” and a touring engagement of the ever popular “Mamma Mia!” two of the biggest hits from that decade will be back treading the boards. Then, in December, comes “Titanique,” a musical spoof of James Cameron’s “Titanic.” (Yes, also from the ’90s.)
It’s not just Toronto theatres. On Broadway, shows like “The Notebook” (based on the 1996 novel) and “MJ the Musical” (a jukebox production on the life of Michael Jackson) are proof that theatremakers are banking on old titles and names from a bygone era. 
So what’s behind this trend? It’s not that writers are running out of ideas. Nor is it that producers merely want to make a quick buck by recycling existing, well-known titles.
Instead, I’d bet that much of it has to do with the nostalgia cycle: the sociological theory that cultural trends re-emerge every few decades. (The length of the cycle, however, is often debated. Some say it’s relatively short, anywhere from 12 to 15 years, while others estimate it takes up to four decades for society to complete a loop.)
We see it in fashion. Just look at the resurgence of Y2K-era skinny jeans, cargo pants and baby tees thanks to Gen Z.
But the nostalgia cycle influences the theatre, too. And we’re seeing it play out stronger than ever before.   
Why? Because we crave escapism — especially now, after a global pandemic and amid a political ecosystem that makes us want to bury our heads in the sand. And the best way to escape is to seek comfort in our nostalgia. 
In the theatre, that’s manifested as a revival of trends from the ’80s and ’90s. Those were the decades of lavish melodramas (think “Les Misérables,” “Phantom of the Opera” and “Miss Saigon”), elements of which are mirrored in contemporary musicals like “Moulin Rouge!” and “Back to the Future” (in the latter, instead of a helicopter or a falling chandelier, you have a flying, time-travelling DeLorean). 
It was also during that era when the so-called “corporate musical” began to flourish. Disney landed on Broadway with “Beauty and the Beast” and the Tony Award-winning “The Lion King,” becoming a mainstay producer ever since. The now-defunct company Livent, led by disgraced Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky, also mounted large-scale “corporate musicals” like “Ragtime” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
But what’s perhaps most fascinating about that period was that many shows were themselves nostalgia-driven vehicles. You could even argue that the ’90s was the decade when the nostalgia cycle truly took root in the theatre. 
Just look at the Tony Award-winning musicals from that decade. “The Will Rogers Follies,” which premiered in 1991, follows the life of its titular vaudevillian performer, while Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” from 1993, was based on the 1950 film of the same name. 
So, in a way, the productions we’re seeing today are nostalgic throwbacks to nostalgic throwbacks.
That “Mamma Mia!” is returning to Toronto, for instance, hearkens back to when it first premiered in the city more than two decades ago. And even then, the musical itself was a vehicle to showcase the songs of ABBA, the ’70s pop band that, at the time, was being rediscovered by a new generation of youth.
The same could be said about the musical “Back to the Future,” a nostalgic throwback to the original film, which itself was a heady ode to the ’50s.
That Toronto audiences are craving this theatrical fare from the ’90s is a small repudiation, I’d argue, of the artistic traditions that came in the intervening decades, between then and now. 
Jonathan Larson’s “Rent,” which arrived halfway through the ’90s, slowly toppled the dominant tradition of the “Broadway spectacle,” ushering in a new era of musical theatre: smaller works that were less concerned with inducing a spectacle than confronting tough sociopolitical issues head on.
“Next to Normal,” which won a 2010 Pulitzer Prize, explores how mental illness can tear apart a family; “Spring Awakening,” which won the Tony for best musical in 2007, is about teenage sexual awakening; and “Fun Home,” which topped the Tonys in 2015, is an autobiographical piece about a lesbian cartoonist forced to reckon with her tenuous relationship with her closeted, gay father. 
These shows were commercial and critical successes. But we’re starting to see their genre fall out of favour, among audiences and — to a lesser extent — critics. “Dear Evan Hansen,” the chamber musical that was a hit on Broadway, prematurely shuttered in Toronto after just three months. More recently, Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” (though a jukebox musical, it’s more akin to “Rent” and “Spring Awakening” in its themes) was largely dismissed by Toronto critics as an overstuffed and muddled product. 
Some — like me — may dread this resurgence of the “escapist musical” at the expense of these “nerdicals,” as theatre critic Jesse Green of the New York Times likes to call them. But if the theory of the nostalgia cycle proves true, it shall only be a temporary phase. Afterwards, I guess, Toronto audiences will need to wait until 2054 for the third Canadian production of “The Lion King.”